Law subject guide: NZ case law

NZLII is a valuable source of full-text case law. Scope varies but includes Supreme Court, Court of Appeal and High Court decisions from at least 2005; plus a lot of decisions from tribunals and authorities.

There are 3 major publishing houses. Knowing who publishes what will speed up your search.

Butterworths = LexisNexis. They publish the official reports: the New Zealand Law Reports.

Brookers = Westlaw = Thomson Reuters

CCH = Intelliconnect = Wolters Kluwer

This page is designed to help you find and use NZ case law.

If you have a full citation to a reported case, use the Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations  to decode the citation (if you need to), then search the library catalogue for the title of the report series; then find the full text - which may be print and/or online.

For just about everything else,  start with index databases, then move on to full-text sources.

Two exceptions to that general rule:

• use print sources if you need earlier material (i.e. pre-1985). Consult the Faculty of Law Research Guide  - or just ask.
• use NZLII (it's free) if you can't access Briefcase or LinxPlus, or if you are looking for decisions from the lower courts that aren't in Briefcase or LinxPlus.

     Court Hierarchy

Reported cases are published by commercial publishers. These cases are selected because of their legal significance, typically because they state or develop a point of law, so they are a good source of legal authority.

The New Zealand Law Reports (NZLR) is New Zealand's official law report series.

• find them in print in the Law Library: Law KG341 N4.
• find them online via the link below.

Other New Zealand report series deal with cases on a particular area of law.

• find them in print via the library catalogue. Or browse at and around Law KG 342.
• find them online,  via WestlawNZ, CCH or LexisNexis NZ. You can get to cases via the law report series (search or browse); or link to cases from the text of the online looseleaf services. Get more detail from the law databases page.

An unreported case is the court document. The case may subsequently be reported, if it is significant; or it may remain unreported, in which case it is more likely to cite the authorities you need rather than to be an authoritative case.

• find recent unreported cases via Briefcase and LinxPlus - links below.
• find unreported cases via NZLII. Particularly good for tribunal decisions that may not be in Briefcase or LINXPlus.
• find older unreported judgments via our Unreported Judgments Index.

Indexes and case citators

• Butterworths annotations to the New Zealand statutes (blue pages) Law KG323. Good for finding cases on a section of a statute. The volumes are arranged aphabetically by statute, with brief case notes under each section of the statute.
• New Zealand Case Citator Law KG351 NH332. Good for finding reported NZ cases that cite reported NZ cases.
• each report series will have its own index, either in each volume or separately at the end of the series.

Reported cases

• Find these via the catalogue - search for the report series title.
• Browse at and around Law KG342.

Unreported judgments

• search the index to our collection of unreported judgments. The most recent judgments are shelved at Law KG346. For earlier judgments, just ask - at the Desk.
• find collections of tribunal and authority decisions at and around Law KG348